This isn't a review of my own (I regret to say), but it is a pointer to a David Weinberger article that was published in the March 2007 issue of the Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization (JOHO). I've been a fan of his writing for years, and am sad that his newsletter has largely been replaced by his blog. I haven't quite evolved into the person I want to be -- a person who will be able to keep up with things in the blog world. But I'm trying.
Anyway, it's an interesting observation. It would be a good conversation starter, especially with some snacks nearby, and a glass at hand. You can read it here.
1 comment:
I can explain why movies suck... but it would take more time than I am prepared to spend at the moment.
More easily, I can explain why some TV shows are better than many movies. It's precisely because TV shows are produced under far more difficult financial and temporal restrictions. Because of these restrictions, TV shows are managed with much greater discipline than feature films.
And I don't just mean financial discipline. Even more important is the creative discipline. On a show like Six Feet Under, only one or two people make decisions about all the creative aspects of the show. On a feature, everybody kicks in their two cents: the stars, the director, all the myriad producers, until the writer's original vision is confused or lost altogether. On a TV show, the writer and producer are often the same person, and the director - that "creative" troublemaker of the feature world - is simply a hired gun, brought in to shoot one episode, then released. If he does a good job and doesn't go over budget, he might be brought back to do another episode. Maybe. Most good TV shows cycle through a stable of 4 to 8 directors.
One other point. As Joss Whedon once said, "Feature films are all about buiding momentum. TV shows are about building character." I think most would agree that it's character that makes a great story. In a TV show, the writers map out an entire season, 10 to 20 hours of screen time, before beginning the detail work of writing. This lets them develop characters with great precision and wonderful timing as a season unfolds. In a feature, we have about 2 hours to handle backstory, plot development, introducing all the characters, and resolving all the conflicts. No easy task, this. Small wonder, really, that most of them are lame.
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